No More Learning

I do assure you, you will think them all
children, you will be so much wiser.

_Ly_. Enough for me, if after twenty years of it I am where you are now.

_Her_. Oh, I was about your age when I started on philosophy; I was forty;
and you must be about that.

_Ly_. Just that; so take and lead me on the same way; that is but right.
And first tell me--do you allow learners to criticize, if they find
difficulties in your doctrines, or must juniors abstain from that?

_Her_. Why, yes, they must; but _you_ shall have leave to ask questions
and criticize; you will learn easier that way.

_Ly_. I thank you for it, Hermotimus, by your name-God Hermes.

Now, is there only one road to philosophy--the Stoic way? they tell me
there are a great many other philosophers; is that so?

_Her_. Certainly--Peripatetics, Epicureans, Platonists, followers of
Diogenes, Antisthenes, Pythagoras, and more yet.

_Ly_. Quite so; numbers of them. Now, are their doctrines the same,
or different?

_Her_. Entirely different.

_Ly_. But the truth, I presume, is bound to be in one of them, and not in
all, as they differ?

_Her_. Certainly.

_Ly_. Then, as you love me, answer this: when you first went in pursuit of
philosophy, you found many gates wide open; what induced you to pass the
others by, and go in at the Stoic gate? Why did you assume that that was
the only true one, which would set you on the straight road to Virtue,
while the rest all opened on blind alleys? What was the test you applied
_then_? Please abolish your present self, the self which is now
instructed, or half-instructed, and better able to distinguish between
good and bad than we outsiders, and answer in your then character of a
layman, with no advantage over me as I am now.

_Her_. I cannot tell what you are driving at.

_Ly_. Oh, there is nothing recondite about it. There are a great many
philosophers--let us say Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, and your spiritual
fathers, Chrysippus, Zeno, and all the rest of them; what was it that
induced you, leaving the rest alone, to pick out the school you did from
among them all, and pin your philosophic faith to it? Were you favoured
like Chaerephon with a revelation from Apollo? Did he tell you the Stoics
were the best of men, and send you to their school? I dare say he
recommends different philosophers to different persons, according to
their individual needs?

_Her_. Nothing of the kind, Lycinus; I never consulted him upon it.

_Ly_. Why? was it not a _dignus vindice nodus_? or were you confident in
your own unaided discrimination?

_Her_. Why, yes; I was.

_Ly_. Then this must be my first lesson from you--how one can decide
out of hand which is the best and the true philosophy to be taken, and
the others left.

_Her_. I will tell you: I observed that it attracted most disciples, and
thence inferred that it was superior.

_Ly_. Give me figures; how many more of them than of Epicureans,
Platonists, Peripatetics? Of course you took a sort of show of hands.

_Her_. Well, no; I didn't count; I just guessed.

_Ly_. Now, now! you are not teaching, but hoaxing me; judge by guess
work and impression, indeed, on a thing of this importance! You are
hiding the truth.

_Her_. Well, that was not my only way; every one told me the Epicureans
were sensual and self-indulgent, the Peripatetics avaricious and
contentious, the Platonists conceited and vain; about the Stoics, on the
contrary, many said they had fortitude and an open mind; he who goes their
way, I heard, was the true king and millionaire and wise man, alone and
all in one.

_Ly_. And, of course, it was other people who so described them; you
would not have taken their own word for their excellences.

_Her_. Certainly not; it was others who said it.

_Ly_. Not their rivals, I suppose?

_Her_. Oh, no.

_Ly_. Laymen, then?

_Her_. Just so.

_Ly_. There you are again, cheating me with your irony; you take me for a
blockhead, who will believe that an intelligent person like Hermotimus, at
the age of forty, would accept the word of laymen about philosophy and
philosophers, and make his own selection on the strength of what they
said.

_Her_. But you see, Lycinus, I did not depend on their judgement entirely,
but on my own too. I saw the Stoics going about with dignity, decently
dressed and groomed, ever with a thoughtful air and a manly countenance,
as far from effeminacy as from the utter repulsive negligence of the
Cynics, bearing themselves, in fact, like moderate men; and every one
admits that moderation is right.

_Ly_. Did you ever see them behaving like your master, as I described him
to you just now? Lending money and clamouring for payment, losing their
tempers in philosophic debates, and making other exhibitions of
themselves? Or perhaps these are trifles, so long as the dress is
decent, the beard long, and the hair close-cropped? We are provided for
the future, then, with an infallible rule and balance, guaranteed by
Hermotimus? It is by appearance and walk and haircutting that the best
men are to be distinguished; and whosoever has not these marks, and is
not solemn and thoughtful, shall be condemned and rejected?

Nay, do not play with me like this; you want to see whether I shall catch
you at it.

_Her_. Why do you say that?

_Ly_. Because, my dear sir, this appearance test is one for statues;
_their_ decent orderly attire has it easily over the Stoics, because
Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron designed them to be graceful. However,
granting as much as you like that these are the right tests, what is a
blind man to do, if he wants to take up philosophy? how is he to find the
man whose principles are right, when he cannot see his appearance or gait?

_Her_. I am not teaching the blind, Lycinus; I have nothing to do with
them.

_Ly_. Ah, but, my good sir, there ought to have been some universal
criterion, in a matter of such great and general use. Still, if you will
have it so, let the blind be excluded from philosophy, as they cannot
see--though, by the way, they are just the people who most need
philosophy to console them for their misfortune; but now, the people who
_can_ see--give them the utmost possible acuity of vision, and what
can they detect of the spiritual qualities from this external shell?

What I mean is this: was it not from admiration of their _spirit_ that you
joined them, expecting to have your own spirit purified?

_Her_. Assuredly.

_Ly_. How could you possibly discern the true philosopher from the
false, then, by the marks you mentioned? It is not the way of such
qualities to come out like that; they are hidden and secret; they are
revealed only under long and patient observation, in talk and debate and
the conduct they inspire. You have probably heard of Momus's indictment
of Hephaestus; if not, you shall have it now. According to the myth,
Athene, Posidon, and Hephaestus had a match in inventiveness. Posidon
made a bull, Athene planned a house, Hephaestus constructed a man; when
they came before Momus, who was to judge, he examined their productions;
I need not trouble you with his criticisms of the other two; but his
objection to the man, and the fault he found with Hephaestus, was this:
he should have made a window in his chest, so that, when it was opened,
his thoughts and designs, his truth or falsehood, might have been
apparent. Momus must have been blear-eyed, to have such ideas about men;
but you have sharper eyes than Lynceus, and pierce through the chest to
what is inside; all is patent to you, not merely any man's wishes and
sentiments, but the comparative merits of any pair.

_Her_. You trifle, Lycinus. I made a pious choice, and do not repent it;
that is enough for me.

_Ly_. And will you yet make a mystery of it to your friend, and let him be
lost with the vulgar herd?

_Her_. Why, you will not accept anything I say.

_Ly_. On the contrary, my good sir, it is you who will not say anything I
can accept. Well, as you refuse me your confidence, and are so jealous of
my becoming a philosopher and your equal, I must even do my best to find
out the infallible test and learn to choose safely for myself. And you may
listen, if you like.

_Her_. That I will, Lycinus; you will very likely hit on some good idea.

_Ly_. Then attend, and do not mock me, if my inquiry is quite
unscientific; it is all I can do, as you, who know better, will not give
me any clearer light.

I conceive Virtue, then, under the figure of a State whose citizens are
happy--as your professor, who is one of them, phrases it,--absolutely
wise, all of them brave, just, and self-controlled, hardly
distinguishable, in fact, from Gods. All sorts of things that go on here,
such as robbery, assault, unfair gain, you will never find attempted
there, I believe; their relations are all peace and unity; and this is
quite natural, seeing that none of the things which elsewhere occasion
strife and rivalry, and prompt men to plot against their neighbours, so
much as come in their way at all. Gold, pleasures, distinctions, they
never regard as objects of dispute; they have banished them long ago as
undesirable elements. Their life is serene and blissful, in the enjoyment
of legality, equality, liberty, and all other good things.

_Her_. Well, Lycinus? Must not all men yearn to belong to a State like
that, and never count the toil of getting there, nor lose heart over the
time it takes? Enough that one day they will arrive, and be naturalized,
and given the franchise.

_Ly_. In good truth, Hermotimus, we should devote all our efforts to
this, and neglect everything else; we need pay little heed to any claims
of our earthly country; we should steel our hearts against the clingings
and cryings of children or parents, if we have them; it is well if we can
induce them to go with us; but, if they will not or cannot, shake them
off and march straight for the city of bliss, leaving your coat in their
hands, if they lay hold of it to keep you back, in your hurry to get
there; what matter for a coat? You will be admitted there without one.

I remember hearing a description of it all once before from an old man,
who urged me to go there with him. He would show me the way, enroll me
when I got there, introduce me to his own circles, and promise me a share
in the universal Happiness. But I was stiff-necked, in my youthful folly
(it was some fifteen years ago); else might I have been in the outskirts,
nay, haply at the very gates, by now. Among the noteworthy things he told
me, I seem to remember these: all the citizens are aliens and foreigners,
not a native among them; they include numbers of barbarians, slaves,
cripples, dwarfs, and poor; in fact any one is admitted; for their law
does not associate the franchise with income, with shape, size, or
beauty, with old or brilliant ancestry; these things are not considered
at all; any one who would be a citizen needs only understanding, zeal for
the right, energy, perseverance, fortitude and resolution in facing all
the trials of the road; whoever proves his possession of these by
persisting till he reaches the city is _ipso facto_ a full citizen,
regardless of his antecedents. Such distinctions as superior and
inferior, noble and common, bond and free, simply do not exist there,
even in name.

_Her_. There, now; you see I am not wasting my pains on trifles; I
yearn to be counted among the citizens of that fair and happy State.

_Ly_. Why, your yearning is mine too; there is nothing I would sooner pray
for. If the city had been near at hand and plain for all to see, be
assured I would never have doubted, nor needed prompting; I would have
gone thither and had my franchise long ago; but as you tell me--you and
your bard Hesiod--that it is set exceeding far off, one must find out
the way to it, and the best guide. You agree?

_Her_. Of course that is the only thing to do.

_Ly_. Now, so far as promises and professions go, there is no lack of
guides; there are numbers of them waiting about, all representing
themselves as from there. But instead of one single road there seem to be
many different and inconsistent ones. North and South, East and West,
they go; one leads through meadows and vegetation and shade, and is well
watered and pleasant, with never a stumbling-block or inequality; another
is rough and rocky, threatening heat and drought and toil. Yet all these
are supposed to lead to the one city, though they take such different
directions.

That is where my difficulty lies; whichever of them I try, there is sure
to be a most respectable person stationed just at the entrance, with a
welcoming hand and an exhortation to go his way; each of them says he is
the only one who knows the straight road; his rivals are all mistaken,
have never been themselves, nor learnt the way from competent guides. I
go to his neighbour, and he gives the same assurances about _his_ way,
abusing the other respectable persons; and so the next, and the next, and
the next. This multiplicity and dissimilarity of the roads gives me
searchings of heart, and still more the assertiveness and self-
satisfaction of the guides; I really cannot tell which turning or whose
directions are most likely to bring me to the city.

_Her_. Oh, but I can solve that puzzle for you; you cannot go wrong,
if you trust those who have been already.

_Ly_. Which do you mean? those who have been by which road, and under
whose guidance? It is the old puzzle in a new form; you have only
substituted men for measures.

_Her_. How do you mean?

_Ly_. Why, the man who has taken Plato's road and travelled with him will
recommend that road; so with Epicurus and the rest; and _you_ will
recommend your own. How else, Hermotimus? it must be so.

_Her_. Well, of course.

_Ly_. So you have not solved my puzzle; I know just as little as before
which traveller to trust; I find that each of them, as well as his guide,
has tried one only, which he now recommends and will have to be the only
one leading to the city. Whether he tells the truth I have no means of
knowing; that he has attained _some_ end, and seen _some_ city, I may
perhaps allow; but whether he saw the right one, or whether, Corinth being
the real goal, he got to Babylon and thought he had seen Corinth--that is
still undecided; for surely every one who has seen a city has not seen
Corinth, unless Corinth is the only city there is. But my greatest
difficulty of all is the absolute certainty that the true road is one; for
Corinth is one, and the other roads lead anywhere but to Corinth, though
there may be people deluded enough to suppose that the North road and the
South road lead equally to Corinth.

_Her_. But that is absurd, Lycinus; they go opposite ways, you see.

_Ly_. Then, my dear good man, this choice of roads and guides is quite a
serious matter; we can by no means just follow our noses; we shall be
discovering that we are well on the way to Babylon or Bactria instead of
to Corinth. Nor is it advisable to toss up, either, on the chance that we
may hit upon the right way if we start upon any one at a venture. That is
no impossibility; it may have come off once and again in a cycle; but I
cannot think we ought to gamble recklessly with such high stakes, nor
commit our hopes to a frail craft, like the wise men who went to sea in a
bowl; we should have no fair complaint against Fortune, if her arrow or
dart did not precisely hit the centre; the odds are ten thousand to one
against her; just so the archer in Homer--Teucer, I suppose it was--when
he meant to hit the dove, only cut the string, which held it; of course it
is infinitely more likely that the point of the arrow will find its billet
in one of the numberless other places, than just in that particular
central one. And as to the perils of blundering into one of the wrong
roads instead of the right one, misled by a belief in the discretion of
Fortune, here is an illustration:--it is no easy matter to turn back and
get safe into port when you have once cast loose your moorings and
committed yourself to the breeze; you are at the mercy of the sea,
frightened, sick and sorry with your tossing about, most likely. Your
mistake was at the beginning: before leaving, you should have gone up to
some high point, and observed whether the wind was in the right quarter,
and of the right strength for a crossing to Corinth, not neglecting, by
the way, to secure the very best pilot obtainable, and a seaworthy craft
equal to so high a sea.

_Her_. Much better so, Lycinus. However, I know that, if you go the
whole round, you will find no better guides or more expert pilots than
the Stoics; if you mean ever to get to Corinth, you will follow them, in
the tracks of Chrysippus and Zeno. It is the only way to do it.

_Ly_. Ah, many can play at the game of assertion. Plato's fellow
traveller, Epicurus's follower, and all the rest, will tell me just what
you do, that I shall never get to Corinth except with whichever of them
it is. So I must either believe them all, or disbelieve impartially. The
latter is much the safest, until we have found out the truth.

Put a case, now: just as I am, as uncertain as ever which of the whole
number has the truth, I choose your school; I rely on you, who are my
friend, but who still know only the Stoic doctrine, and have not
travelled any way but that. Now some God brings Plato, Pythagoras,
Aristotle, and the rest to life again; they gather round and cross-
examine me, or actually sue me in court for constructive defamation;
_Good Lycinus_, they say, _what possessed or who induced you to
exalt Chrysippus and Zeno at our expense? we are far older established;
they are mere creatures of yesterday; yet you never gave us a hearing,
nor inquired into our statements at all_. Well, what am I to plead?
will it avail me to say I trusted my friend Hermotimus? I feel sure they
will say, _We know not this Hermotimus, who he is, nor he us; you had
no right to condemn us all, and give judgement by default against us, on
the authority of a man who knew only one of the philosophic roads, and
even that, perhaps, imperfectly. These are not the instructions issued to
juries, Lycinus; they are not to hear one party, and, refuse the other
permission to say what he deems advisable; they are to hear both sides
alike, with a view to the better sifting of truth from falsehood by
comparison of the arguments; if they fail in these duties, the law allows
an appeal to another court_. That is what we may expect them to say.

Then one of them might proceed to question me like this: _Suppose,
Lycinus, that an Ethiopian who had never been abroad in his life, nor
seen other men like us, were to state categorically in an Ethiopian
assembly that there did not exist on earth any white or yellow men--
nothing but blacks--, would his statement be accepted? or would some
Ethiopian elder remark, How do you know, my confident friend? you have
never been in foreign parts, nor had any experience of other nations. _
Shall I tell him the old man's question was justified?
what do you
advise, my counsel?

_Her_. Say that, certainly; I consider the old man's rebuke quite
reasonable.

_Ly_. So do I. But I am not so sure you will approve what comes
next; as for me, I have as little doubt of that as of the other.

_Her_. What is it?

_Ly_. The next step will be the application; my questioner will say,
_Now Lycinus, let us suppose an analogue, in a person acquainted only
with the Stoic doctrine, like your friend Hermotimus; he has never
travelled in Plato's country, or to Epicurus, or any other land; now, if
he were to state that there was no such beauty or truth in those many
countries as there is in the Porch and its teaching, would you not be
justified in considering it bold of him to give you his opinion about
them all, whereas he knew only one, having never set foot outside the
bounds of Ethiopia? _ What reply do you advise to that?

_Her_. The perfectly true one, of course, that it is indeed the Stoic
doctrine that we study fully, being minded to sink or swim with that, but
still we do know what the others say also; our teacher rehearses the
articles of their beliefs to us incidentally, and demolishes them with his
comments.

_Ly_. Do you suppose the Platonists, Pythagoreans, Epicureans, and
other schools, will let that pass? or will they laugh out loud and say,
_What remarkable methods your friend has, Lycinus! he accepts our
adversaries' character of us, and gathers our doctrines from the
description of people who do not know, or deliberately misrepresent them.
If he were to see an athlete getting his muscles in trim by kicking high,
or hitting out at empty space as though he were getting a real blow home,
would he (in the capacity of umpire) at once proclaim him victor, because
he _could not help winning_? No; _he would reflect that these displays are
easy and safe, when there is no defence to be reckoned with, and that the
real decision must wait till he has beaten and mastered his opponent, and
the latter 'has had enough'. Well then, do not let Hermotimus suppose from
his teachers' sparrings with our shadows (for _we_ are not there) that
they have the victory, or that our doctrines are so easily upset; tell him
the business is too like the sand houses which children, having built them
weak, have no difficulty in overturning, or, to change the figure, like
people practising archery; they make a straw target, hang it to a post,
plant it a little way off, and then let fly at it; if they hit and get
through the straw, they burst into a shout, as if it were a great triumph
to have driven through the dry stuff. That is not the way the Persians
take, or those Scythian tribes which use the bow. Generally, when _they_
shoot, in the first place they are themselves mounted and in motion, and
secondly, they like the mark to be moving too; it is not to be stationary,
waiting for the arrival of the arrow, but passing at full speed; they can
usually kill beasts, and their marksmen hit birds. If it ever happens that
they want to test the actual impact on a target, they set up one of stout
wood, or a shield of raw hide; piercing that, they reckon that their
shafts will go through armour too. So, Lycinus, tell Hermotimus from us
that his teachers fierce straw targets, and then say they have disposed of
armed men; or paint up figures of us, spar at them, and, after a not
surprising success, think they have beaten us. But we shall severally
quote against them Achilles's words against Hector:

They dare not face the nodding of my plume. _

So say all of them, one after the other.

I suspect that Plato, with his intimate knowledge of Sicily, will add an
anecdote from there. Gelo of Syracuse had disagreeable breath, but did
not find it out himself for a long time, no one venturing to mention such
a circumstance to a tyrant. At last a foreign woman who had a connexion
with him dared to tell him; whereupon he went to his wife and scolded her
for never having, with all her opportunities of knowing, warned him of
it; she put in the defence that, as she had never been familiar or at
close quarters with any other man, she had supposed all men were like
that. So Hermotinus (Plato will say) after his exclusive association with
Stoics, cannot be expected to know the savour of other people's mouths.
Chrysippus, on the other hand, might say as much or more if I were to put
_him_ out of court and betake myself to Platonism, in reliance upon
some one who had conversed with Plato alone. And in a word, as long as it
is uncertain which is the true philosophic school, I choose none; choice
of one is insult to the rest.

_Her_. For Heaven's sake, Lycinus, let us leave Plato, Aristotle,
Epicurus, and the rest of them alone; to argue with them is not for me.
Why not just hold a private inquiry, you and I, whether philosophy is
what I say it is? As for the Ethiopians and Gelo's wife, what a long way
you have brought them on none of their business!

_Ly_. Away with them, then, if you find their company superfluous.
And now do you proceed; my expectations are high.

_Her_. Well, it seems to me perfectly possible, Lycinus, after
studying the Stoic doctrines alone, to get at the truth from them,
without going through a course of all the others too. Look at it this
way: if any one tells you simply, Twice two is four, need you go round
all the mathematicians to find out whether there is one who makes it
five, or seven; or would you know at once that the man was right?

_Ly_. Certainly I should.

_Her_. Then why should you think it impossible for a man who finds,
without going further, that the Stoics make true statements, to believe
them and dispense with further witness? He knows that four can never be
five, though ten thousand Platos or Pythagorases said it was.

_Ly_. Not to the point. You compare accepted with disputed facts,
whereas they are completely different. Tell me, did you ever meet a man
who said twice two was seven or eleven?

_Her_. Not I; any one who did not make four of it must be mad.

_Ly_. But on the other hand--try to tell the truth, I adjure you--,
did you ever meet a Stoic and an Epicurean who did _not_ differ
about principles or ends?

_Her_. No.

_Ly_. You are an honest man; now ask yourself whether you are trapping a
friend with false logic. We are trying to find out with whom philosophic
truth lies; and you beg the question and make a present of that same truth
to the Stoics; for you say (what is quite unproved) that they are the
people who make twice two four; the Epicureans or Platonists would say
that _they_ bring out that result, whereas you get five or seven. Does it
not amount to that, when your school reckon goodness the only end, and the
Epicureans pleasure? or again when you say everything is material, and
Plato recognizes an immaterial element also in all that exists? As I said,
you lay hold of the thing in dispute, as though it were the admitted
property of the Stoics, and put it into their hands, though the others
claim it and maintain that it is theirs; why, it is the very point at
issue. If it is once established that Stoics have the monopoly of making
four out of twice two, it is time for the rest to hold their tongues; but
as long as they refuse to yield that point, we must hear all alike, or be
prepared for people's calling us partial judges.

_Her_. It seems to me, Lycinus, you do not understand what I mean.

_Ly_. Very well, put it plainer, if it is something different from that.

_Her_. You will see in a minute. Let us suppose two people have gone
into the temple of Asclepius or Dionysus, and subsequently one of the
sacred cups is missing. Both of them will have to be searched, to see
which has it about him.

_Ly_. Clearly.

_Her_. Of course one of them has it.

_Ly_. Necessarily, if it is missing.

_Her_. Then, if you find it on the first, you will not strip the other; it
is clear he has not got it.

_Ly_. Quite.

_Her_. And if we fail to find it on the first, the other certainly has it;
it is unnecessary to search him that way either.

_Ly_. Yes, he has it.

_Her_. So with us; if we find the cup in the possession of the Stoics, we
shall not care to go on and search the others; we have what we were
looking for; why trouble further?

_Ly_. There is no why, if you really find it, and can be certain it
is the missing article, the sacred object being unmistakable. But there
are some differences in this case, friend, the temple-visitors are not
two, so that if one has not got the booty the other has, but many; and
the identity of the missing object is also uncertain; it may be cup, or
bowl, or garland; every priest gives a different description of it; they
do not agree even about the material; bronze, say these, silver, say
those--anything from gold to tin. So there is nothing for it but to strip
the visitors, if you want to find it; even if you discover a gold cup on
the first man, you must go on to the others.

_Her_. What for?

_Ly_. Because it is not certain that the thing was a cup. And even if that
is generally admitted, they do not all agree that it was gold; and if it
is well known that a gold cup is missing, and you find a gold cup on your
first man, even so you are not quit of searching the others; it is not
clear that this is _the_ sacred cup; do you suppose there is only one gold
cup in the world?

_Her_. No, indeed.

_Ly_. So you will have to go the round, and then collect all your finds
together and decide which of them is most likely to be divine property.

For the source of all the difficulty is this: every one who is stripped
has something or other on him, one a bowl, one a cup, one a garland,
which again may be bronze, gold, or silver; but whether the one he has is
the sacred one, is not yet clear. It is absolutely impossible to know
which man to accuse of sacrilege; even if all the objects were similar,
it would be uncertain who had robbed the God; for such things may be
private property too. Our perplexity, of course, is simply due to the
fact that the missing cup--assume it to be a cup--has no inscription; if
either the God's or the donor's name had been on it, we should not have
had all this trouble; when we found the inscribed one, we should have
stopped stripping and inconveniencing other visitors. I suppose,
Hermotimus, you have often been at athletic meetings?

_Her_. You suppose right; and in many places too.

_Ly_. Did you ever have a seat close by the judges?

_Her_. Dear me, yes; last Olympia, I was on the left of the stewards;
Euandridas of Elis had got me a place in the Elean enclosure; I
particularly wanted to have a near view of how things are done there.

_Ly_. So you know how they arrange ties for the wrestling or the
pancratium?

_Her_. Yes.

_Ly_. Then you will describe it better than I, as you have seen it
so close.

_Her_. In old days, when Heracles presided, bay leaves--

_Ly_. No old days, thank you; tell me what you saw with your own
eyes.

_Her_. A consecrated silver urn is produced, and into it are thrown
little lots about the size of a bean, with letters on them. Two are
marked alpha [Footnote: The Greek alphabet runs: alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi,
omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega. ], two beta,
two more gamma, and so on, if the competitors run to more than that--two
lots always to each letter. A competitor comes up, makes a prayer to
Zeus, dips his hand into the urn, and pulls out one lot; then another
does the same; there is a policeman to each drawer, who holds his hand so
that he cannot see what letter he has drawn. When all have drawn, the
chief police officer, I think it is, or one of the stewards themselves--I
cannot quite remember this detail--, goes round and examines the lots
while they stand in a circle, and puts together the two alphas for the
wrestling or pancratium, and so for the two betas, and the rest. That is
the procedure when the number of competitors is even, as eight, four, or
twelve. If it is five, seven, nine, or other odd number, an odd letter is
marked on one lot, which is put in with the others, not having a
duplicate. Whoever draws this is a bye, and waits till the rest have
finished their ties; no duplicate turns up for him, you see; and it is a
considerable advantage to an athlete, to know that he will come fresh
against tired competitors.

_Ly_. Stop there; that is just what I wanted. There are nine of them, we
will say, and they have all drawn, and the lots are in their hands. You go
round--for I promote you from spectator to steward--examining the letters;
and I suppose you will not know who is the bye till you have been to them
all and paired them.

_Her_. How do you mean?

_Ly_. It is impossible for you to hit straight upon the letter which
indicates the bye; at least, you may hit upon the letter, but you will
not know about the bye; it was not announced beforehand that kappa or mu
or iota had the appointment in its gift; when you find alpha, you look
for the holder of the other alpha, whom finding, you pair the two. Again
finding beta, you inquire into the whereabouts of the second beta which
matches it; and so all through, till there is no one left but the holder
of the single unpaired letter.

_Her_. But suppose you come upon it first or second, what will you do
then?

_Ly_. Never mind me; I want to know what _you_ will do, Mr. Steward. Will
you say at once, Here is the bye? or will you have to go round to all, and
see whether there is a duplicate to be found, it being impossible to know
the bye till you have seen all the lots?

_Her_. Why, Lycinus, I shall know quite easily; nine being the number, if
I find the epsilon first or second, I know the holder of it for the bye.

_Ly_. But how?

_Her_. How? Why, two of them must have alpha, two beta, and of the
next two pairs one has certainly drawn gammas and the other deltas, so
that four letters have been used up over eight competitors. Obviously,
then, the next letter, which is epsilon, is the only one that can be odd,
and the drawer of it is the bye.

_Ly_. Shall I extol your intelligence, or would you rather I explained to
you my own poor idea, which differs?

_Her_. The latter, of course, though I cannot conceive how you can
reasonably differ.

_Ly_. You have gone on the assumption that the letters are taken in
alphabetical order, until at a particular one the number of competitors
runs short; and I grant you it may be done so at Olympia. But suppose we
were to pick out five letters at random, say chi, sigma, zeta, kappa,
theta, and duplicate the other four on the lots for eight competitors,
but put a single zeta on the ninth, which we meant to indicate the
bye--what then would you do if you came on the zeta first? How can you
tell that its holder is the bye till you have been all round and found no
counterpart to it? for you could not tell by the alphabetical order, as
at Olympia.

_Her_. A difficult question.

_Ly_. Look at the same thing another way. Suppose we put no letters
at all on the lots, but, instead of them, signs and marks such as the
Egyptians use for letters, men with dogs' or lions' heads. Or no, those
are rather too strange; let us avoid hybrids, and put down simple forms,
as well as our draughtsmanship will allow--men on two lots, horses on
two, a pair of cocks, a pair of dogs, and let a lion be the mark of the
ninth. Now, if you hit upon the lion at the first try, how can you tell
that this is the bye-maker, until you have gone all round and seen
whether any one else has a lion to match?

_Her_. Your question is too much for me.

_Ly_. No wonder; there is no plausible answer. Consequently if we
mean to find either the man who has the sacred cup, or the bye, or our
best guide to the famous city of Corinth, we must absolutely go to and
examine them all, trying them carefully, stripping and comparing them;
the truth will be hard enough to find, even so. If I am to take any one's
advice upon the right philosophy to choose, I insist upon his knowing
what they all say; every one else I disqualify; I will not trust him
while there is one philosophy he is unacquainted with; that one may
possibly be the best of all. If some one were to produce a handsome man,
and state that he was the handsomest of mankind, we should not accept
that, unless we knew he had seen all men; very likely his man is
handsome, but whether the handsomest, he has no means of knowing without
seeing all. Now we are looking not simply for beauty, but for the
greatest beauty, and if we miss that, we shall account ourselves no
further than we were; we shall not be content with chancing upon some
sort of beauty; we are in search of a definite thing, the supreme beauty,
which must necessarily be _one_.

_Her_. True.

_Ly_. Well then, can you name me a man who has tried every road in
philosophy? one who, knowing the doctrine of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle,
Chrysippus, Epicurus, and the rest, has ended by selecting one out of all
these roads, because he has proved it genuine, and had found it by
experience to be the only one that led straight to Happiness? If we
can meet with such a man, we are at the end of our troubles.

_Her_. Alas, that is no easy matter.

_Ly_. What shall we do, then? I do not think we ought to despair, in the
momentary absence of such a guide. Perhaps the best and safest plan
of all is to set to work oneself, go through every system, and carefully
examine the various doctrines.

_Her_. That is what seems to be indicated. I am afraid, though, there is
an obstacle in what you said just now: it is not easy, when you have
committed yourself with a spread of canvas to the wind, to get home
again. How can a man try all the roads, when, as you said, he will be
unable to escape from the first of them?

_Ly_. My notion is to copy Theseus, get dame Ariadne to give us a skein,
and go into one labyrinth after another, with the certainty of getting out
by winding it up.

_Her_. Who is to be our Ariadne? Where shall we find the skein?

_Ly_. Never despair; I fancy I have found something to hold on to and
escape.

_Her_.